More phone advice

Learned friends:

I need a phone to access the internet with a screen big enough to see a lot of detail. I'm not concerned about anything else, don't even need calls, just the internet connection.

Looking at £15 per month, might even squeeze £20 at a push. If I have to go 18 months then so be it.

Advise away...

 

02 Simplicity mate.

 

Does it have to be a phone? TBH intenet on a mobile is pretty poo unless you have one of the newer high res touchscreen phones like the new version of mine

http://www.htc.com/uk/product/hd2/overview.html

Bonus is as it's a windows phone you can run different browsers but youre looking at £25 a month plus if you want the phone free. Also its wifi when possible so faster.

Other wise how about a net book and mobile internet.

the best netbook out there at the mo seems to be the samsung and for £25/month you can get that free

http://www.currys.co.uk/martprd/editorial/get_connected_prod_page?sku=538745

 

Cant go wrong with a blackberry curve

 

Well I dragged myself up to the Harlequin for my sins and did a tour of the mobile phone shops. Is it a requirement to reek of body odour to work in those places? Now detoxing.

Anyway, a work mate and mobile phone specialist, (proper geek), talked me through the best options and I almost got an IPhone now that Orange are doing them for £30 a month with the IPhone free, (older model). I also nearly went for the Pulse from tmobile with the Google software at £25 per month. My final decision was based on the operating system and size, as I just felt that the above 2 were a bit too big to fit in my pocket comfortably.

So I went for an HTC touch 2 from TMobile, (the top quality customer service and advice from the staff there also swayed me), on a 2 year contract for £20 a month including unlimited internet usage.

Thanks for the advice above.

 

Nice will be interested to see what you think. I was going for one of them originally but the launch was delayed by a couple of weeks to had to shell out the extra for the HD.

 

Samsung B3310 looks good. Well it was advertised on the main forum anyway.

 

HTC have been making phones for years for other people mainly the pocket PC ones. Imate HP the XDA s etc. Windows just needs a bit of a push, technically it's better than the iphones and their system but they've got the jump on usability and obviously support and userbase.

I read that about Tescos, but the've not got the latest models though.

 

Admin, what tariff/deal did you get and was it from the T-Mob in the Harlequin centre?

 

£20 per month on a 2 year contract from the TMobile shop in the Harlequin. Unlimited internet usage which was my priority, 100 minutes and 100 texts which is more than enough for me. A few more £ would have seen the text and minutes rise massively.

TMobile were without doubt the most informed and professional staff of them all, the rest were an utter shambles. I was pretty annoyed at the incompetence of some staff, especially phones4u.

As for the phone itself, well I love the size and useability, fits perfectly in my pocket, survived a Newcastle weekend unscathed. I've set up my email accounts, added a few apps including TomTom, and am getting used to using it for everything. Only downsides are that the camera needs good light, (no flash), and that it doesn't automatically have a sensor so that when you tip the phone into landscape mode it shifts the screen. Otherwise champion!

 

How much extra for the text/minute allowance do you know?

Might go for that myself

 

Wow.
Phones4u had amazing customer service when i got my blackberry in October.
So good that each time i reccomend a friend to get thier phone from phones4u, i get £20 cash in hand and i get discount for the person getting the phone.
At the start of november, i took my mate in there. He got an HTC Hero on contract, was supposed to pay £60 for the phone but because i was there with my little contact card thing, he got the phone for free

 

It was less than 25 quid for everything.
Currently posting from a Met line train bouncing through Wembley Park!!

 

my girlfriend has a htc and based on her hilarious inadequacy with technology i can say you'll live to rue the day you went htc. within the month you'll find that the flimsy battery case leads it to turn off when you flick the screen while the alarm is unstoppable.

 

Not had any build qulaity issues myself but I suppose it will depend on the model. Yes I would agree that windows phones are not the most straightforward to use but that is because they are so versatile. It's horses for courses. I wanted a device that I could use the internet, play my mp3's sync my files to and occasionally have the odd phone call and text on. Added to that it's got 5Mp camera and you can watch movies and play games on it.

 

Another mobile query

My contract is up and been offered a number of phones

I can get HTC Tatoo, Sony Eriksson w595 or c510, Samsung blade or genio slide, Nokia n97 mini, 5800, 6303, 6730 or 5230 or finally Blackberry 8900 curve, 8520 curve, 9700 bold or storm2. I can also get a LG GM750 but hated LG last time I had one.

There we go guys, plenty of options and i haven't got a clue. I have has Sony Eriksson the last 2 times and not been impressed with them either faults withs speakers or just dodgy software C902.

Any ideas please! I should add that I use my phone a lot as a camera and not overly bothered about music etc

 

Well if you use it a lot for camera work, make sure it has a flash. Mine doesn't and already it's been an annoyance.

The bigger HTC's definately run out of charge quicker than my Touch2. A guy at work has 2 HTC's and the newest blackberry, and he now swears by the blackberry. I'll find out what one it is tomorrow.

 

Cheers Admin, I am starting to feel old as was always up on my tech stuff but all these new phones are confusing me big time!

 

Im hopefully getting a blackberry at the weekend!

 

Wait until you get the thing. The other night I couldn't work out how to get a name up to call the number .

 

You need to go onto an iPhone tarriff to get an iPhone.

 

As long as you've got an O2 sim then it will work on an O2 iphone but be careful. A lot of iphone and other smartphone facilities rely on data connection and on a PAYG contract you might get hammered on charges unless you can turn these functions off.

 

In my experience unless you are on a business contract and get business emails avoid the blackberry. As a phone they're not great. As admin says just go for one with a decent camera if that's important for you, don't be swayed by large megapixles instead of things like autofocus zoom (not digital zoom) and flash.

 

Went for the Samsung Omnia a year ago. It holds loads of windows stuff, massive memory, loads of songs etc.

Even run a powerpoint presentation on it to a TV. 5.mb camera but bloody touch screen. Never ever again. I like buttons.

The Palm.Pre looks pretty good

 

I have gone for the Nokia N97 mini as seemed the best for my use. Cheers for the helpful comments.

 

One bit of advice for anyone getting a new contract/changing over providers: Stay away from 3 if possible! I've been with them for a while now and their all round service has left a lot to be desired.

The network signal is beyond a joke sometimes, occasionally cutting out in the middle of a conversation for no reason and I can't use the phone in certain rooms in my house. I foolishly renewed my contract with them last year so I've got until December left, then I'll definitely up sticks to a better provider.

 

Completely agree.

 

i "found" an iphone recently. i can only use the wifi aspect for internetting as a result, but i love it. i truly do

 

You'll never see that again, its the reason I left T-Mobile. Not to mention the poor signal all over the country.

 

Not had any problems with Virgin which is on the T-Mobile network apart from Warrington for some strange reason where there's no mobile signal for any network. What's that all about?

 

I've never had phone signal in Croxley, and when I moved to Brighton there was zero signal anywhere. I called them up and they tried to claim there was signal as their internet signal checker said so, even though I could clearly see there was not.

So along comes freshers fair and I notice a t-mobile stall so me and a friend went to have a chat only to be rebuffed again as it not being their fault. So we decided to question why they were trying to sell a product to students that won't actually work at the university halls. Again no answer and we were told to 'eff off' in the end after a slightly more heated argument.

Oh well it's personal experience I guess, but I will never go back.

 

To be fair they are all as bad as each other once you've signed up.

I've had Contracts with BT-Cellnet (not been with them since they changed to O2), Orange, Vodafone, T-Mobile and Virgin.

BT-Cellnet were by far the worst, I was on a pay in advance contract, £150 (this was a good few years ago) and this gave me the phone and £5 worth of calls a month plus I had a debit card registered with them should I go over my allocated mins. Three times during the 12 month contract I was called and the first thing they said was we are going to cut you off. Three times I argued with them about the contract terms and in fact I'd already paid and if I'd gone over my limit you had my debit card details to charge me. 3 times they lost the debit card details and twice they couldn't add my bill up correctly, always in their favour of course.

Orange, They were OK no problems with billing or service but they were expensive and reception was patchy outside London. No real cause to moan about the customer service, they did get the bills wrong a couple of times but always sorted it without issue.

Vodafone, I've had 2 different contracts with them both through work. Both times they right royally screwed up in setting up the account once blocking international calls and leaving me stranded in Germany with no contact means. It was the insistence that they had set things up correctly as requested despite my copy of the set up details proving the opposite that really annoyed me. I'm a customer Service professional and if a company screws up, how they deal with it makes a big impression on me, they didn't.

T-Mobile, my first dealings completely online with a phone company. To be fair they were very good, but 2 months after taking out a contract I was given a work phone. At the end of the contract period I wanted to switch to pay as you go to keep the number for personal use. No matter how hard I tried to explain to them that it would mean them getting money from me, their system was unable to allow me to swap the number to PAYG, so in the end I had to cancel the contract.

Virgin, the only company I have been completely happy with and have had not one issue. I've got a pay as you talk contract. I only spend a couple of quid a month so there's no sense me going for a proper contract and I hate the idea of running out of credit or buying vouchers. At the time these were the only guys doing this offer. I've had this contract for years now, I buy my own sim free unlocked phones and for me this works best. The only minor issue is maybe piggybacking off of the T-mobile network reception is not as good as some of the bigger boys.

 

BEST DEAL, for a Blackberry

http://shop.orange.co.uk/mobile-phones/basket/cart.jsp

http://www.t-mobile.co.uk/shop/your-choice/